


Not Normal

by gonan



Series: gallavich but make it lesbian [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Genderswap, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Internalized Homophobia, Texting, no beta we die like men, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23825245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonan/pseuds/gonan
Summary: Mikayla wants to put Ian’s number to good use, but she can still hear her mother’s voice everywhere she goes.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Series: gallavich but make it lesbian [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634044
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	Not Normal

**Author's Note:**

> ***  
> TW for homophobia (internalized and otherwise) and brief mentions of past sexual assault (under the influence / forcing self to sleep with the opposite sex)  
> ***
> 
> please be careful and please tell me if i should add any other warnings. 
> 
> i wrote this after my dad said some really homophobic shit about my friends so it’s basically just a vent. the first date is coming though, i promise x
> 
> this is part of a series and probably won’t make as much sense unless you’ve read the first installment, so please go do that if you’re interested!

Mikayla laid in bed with her cast resting over her heart and fiddled with her phone. She’d been locking and unlocking it periodically, screen stuck on the unfinished contact titled “emt ian” — with a little fireball emoji placed cheekily next to it — whenever she opened it back up. The number was in there, all ten digits of it, but she hadn’t pressed the “create contact” button or even started drafting a text yet.

It had been three days. Her window of opportunity to be aloof-but-still-interested was wide open, but she couldn’t bring herself to input the other woman’s number. She kept staring at the screen, the contact name occasionally prompting a private smile, but soon enough that cold sickening feeling would creep in again and she let it drop along with her phone. 

This was the first time she’d actually found someone that interested her both romantically and sexually. It was usually one or the other — or, more likely in her case, neither at all. And it was hard for her to admit, but she kind of wanted to go out on an actual date with this woman. Something about Lillian’s winning smile and blatant flirting told Mikayla that she’d love all that cheesy shit, but that she wouldn’t insist they go to some five-star restaurant or catch a romcom like a pair of moony-eyed teenage girls.

None of this should scare her. Her mother was in prison for shanking a cokehead that owed her money, and if the state of Illinois had anything to say about it, she wouldn’t be seeing the light of day for a long time. Her siblings’ opinions on her sexuality ranged from vague acknowledgement to complete indifference. Not to mention Sander, who was as queer as a two dollar bill. She was safe, for what felt like the first time in her life, to be who she was and fuck who she wanted without fearing for her life. 

But her mind told her a different story. It lived in a different house, the one this house used to be just a mere few years ago. It was a shitshow — full of yelling and flying fists and the kind of slurs that Mikayla used to spit at other people to hide how the taste of them turned her stomach inside out. But it was where she felt at home, despite how the emotional wounds it inflicted still festered under her skin like an infection.

Terri was in there somewhere. Of course she was. She would always occupy a corner of her daughter’s mind, whether Mikayla liked it or not. Her words were as cruel and ugly as she was, and that awful laugh that couldn’t seem to tell an insult from a joke was committed to memory. 

_I always knew you were a muff-diver,_ her voice echoed through the broken-down rooms in Mikayla’s head with a taunting sneer. _But I wouldn’t’ve taken you for a carrot cake type of girl._

It sounded exactly like something she’d say, which was what set Mikayla’s teeth on edge most about the mental intrusion. Because what exactly did that bitch know about her? She liked gingers. Always had. She liked her women gangly and tough and a little fuckin’ funny-looking. All pale, spotted with freckles and shit — and sue her — she liked ‘em sweet too. 

Ian was sweet, despite her fiery edge. She had tenderly wrapped Mikayla’s arm in a splint with the same calloused hands she used to strike matches and knock skulls together. If Gallagher were a food, she’d be flambéd sugar, and Mikayla wanted nothing more than to be the gooey puddle that sat just under her hard protective shell.

If they were in high school, back when Terri still had Mikayla firmly secured under her thumb, Ian would have been the type of girl she’d secretly pine for from afar. Too perfect to touch, too proud to stay a secret. She could see herself harassing and poking at the ginger fuck just to get a rise out of her, trying desperately to disguise how badly she wanted to get on her with that slew of fag-bashing bullshit she had been famous for back then. Mikayla would watch her hips swish by and her ponytail sway like she’d been caught in the swing of a hypnotist’s pendulum, pretending all the while that she didn’t want what she did just because she wasn’t allowed to have it.

She was the kind of person that Mikayla could see Manny being into as his bumbling little ninth grade self as well. She seemed like someone that Manny would get along with period, a thought that was very much unwelcome and made her worry for her future — should she ever work up the courage to fucking text the chick, that is. 

Mikayla could just see her mother in her mind’s eye, watching her open and close her phone to the sight of a woman’s contact with the kind of focus someone like her didn’t often show anything. Her fingers were shaking. It was almost too stupid to admit, but she hadn’t thought about that bitch in a hot minute, and every unpleasant memory was rushing back unbidden to gnaw on the vulnerable soft pink parts of her mind. 

When Terri was still at home, Mikayla had begrudgingly gone out with Manny to the shitty clubs downtown in an attempt to placate any budding suspicions about her sexuality. Despite her aching desire to stay home and relax after working herself into the ground for her family on a damn near constant basis, she would drag herself out time and again in short skirts and low tops, hoping to get trashed enough to tolerate the attention they brought with them. In her desperation to appear straight, she’d danced with just about any man that had grabbed for her, feeling that twisting bite of wrongness in her stomach when they brought her to their crotches uninvited and pulled her into back alleys to have their way with her. In the moment she was always either too fucked up to care or too scared to reject them, but the mornings after always brought with them the sober clarity that she eventually came to dread more than the act itself. 

She remembered the pats in the back she’d get from Terri every time she stumbled home smelling like sex and cheap rum, a touch that hit her skin like ice and skittered down her spine as such until something inside of her started freezing over permanently. Her mother had taken from her, taken and taken until there was a hollowed out space in her chest she could never fill, a place that throbbed to the beat of her thundering heart as years of continual pressure to be something she wasn’t slowly replaced all of her pain and shame with anger. 

The emotion alone was enough to get her fingers moving, a silent _fuck you fuck you fuck you_ sent out telepathically to whatever iron cell or molding shower stall her mother was currently in as she saved Ian’s number and sent off the first introductory message that she could come up with off the top of her head.

_hey. it’s mikayla. dumbass busted arm mikayla_

She cursed herself for how stupid it sounded, but now the words were out there and she couldn’t get them back. She didn’t want them back; now that she had sent Ian something, _anything_ , the vice-like grip her mother’s ghostly hands had around her throat eased into a cool chill that she could breathe around.

Nothing was coming back through, though, and as time ticked by without a reply Mikayla got more and more disheartened. Every worst-case scenario began crossing her mind, from being given the wrong number on purpose to being given the wrong number on _accident_ , until her paranoid mind was crafting elaborate storylines wherein Ian had received the text while driving and swerved off into a ditch to her death.

But of course, nothing of the sort happened. Twenty minutes later her phone buzzed, after she’d given up staring at the screen in an attempt to will a reply from thin air and moved on to playing an old racing game to dispel her nervous energy, and her index finger darted to the notification so fast she could swear she didn’t see it move.

Ian’s only response was an image, and when she opened it she saw that it was a contact draft that had “Dumbass Busted Arm Mikayla” typed out into the space above her number. She scoffed, sending back a very eloquent, 

_fuck off_

as was her standard. 

Ian was undeterred by her snarky message — a good sign considering that that was basically all Mikayla had to offer in the way of texting. Her reply didn’t take nearly as long to come through this time, and when it did Mikayla nearly sent her phone across the room with how fast she lunged for it. Fucking embarrassing. 

_I showed you mine. Will you show me yours?_

Mikayla scowled at the teasing undertone clear in the question. She quickly changed Ian’s contact name to “shithead gallagher” and fired off a screenshot — before biting her lip and changing it back. She couldn’t help it. The little alliteration was clever, she thought. And it’d help her remember who the fuck she was texting.

_Lol_

_How_ is _your busted arm?_

The mention of it made her arm twinge as if it had just been reminded of the pain it was supposed to be in. She was glad Ian couldn’t see the wince it caused — it would’ve really ruined the tough-as-nails image she’d been working her whole life to cultivate. Not that the little stunt she’d pulled with Jamie’s bike hadn’t done so already. 

_don’t worry about me florence nightingale_

_i’m a big girl_

_Doesn’t mean your arm isn’t fucked_

And, okay, she had a point. Fuck if Mikayla was going to concede to it though. 

_MINOR surgery gallagher_

_got out in ten minutes, tops_

_they didn’t even have to put me under_

_The fuck they didn’t. You were loopy as hell when I left you_

Mikayla pushed her lip out in an exaggerated pout. This bitch was turning out to be just as stubborn as she was. Why did she like her again?

_whatever orphan annie_

_Wow! Haven’t heard that one before_

_shut up_

It was a decidedly weak retort, but the message she got in return sent heat rushing to the high points of her face. 

_Why don’t you find a way to make me ;)_

As tempting as the offer was, she looked down at the hard plaster case holding her arm together and sighed as her eyes traced the crude sentence Manny had scribbled onto it with permanent marker. It said something about lady boners and ginger giants that she definitely didn’t want Ian to see, even if she herself could barely make out the words. The woman worked with doctors. If anyone had a chance of parsing the foul sentiment out, it was her. 

_fuck off clifford. i’m in recovery_

Ian wouldn’t be deterred so easily. Mikayla was finding that that was something she liked about her. 

_I can give you something to recover from ;)_

Mikayla huffed softly into the fabric of her pillow. Her and those fucking winky faces. 

_jesus christ_

_So no date then? I assumed that was why you wanted my #_

Her heart twinged in her chest, silently panicking over the possibility of missing her chance. She quickly typed out her explanation, editing and deleting it several times until she landed on something that didn’t sound as frantic as she truly was, then ended up cringing at it all the same. 

_no_

_i look pathetic rn_

_sander got me to agree to a stupid bright blue cast while i was fucked up on painkillers and he drew a dick on it_

She looked at it now, nearly running the length of the cast before squirting out onto her thumb in two long drops. Very fucking classy. Twink bastard.

Unfortunately, his artwork seemed to pique Ian’s interest even more.

_Now you have to ask me out. I’d pay to see that_

Mikayla just barely stopped herself from asking how much, instead sticking with a tried and true Milkovich comeback.

_fuck no_

She felt as if she’d made herself pretty clear, but Red was eager, and she honestly couldn’t blame the chick one bit. 

_Soon then? How long until you get your cast off?_

Mikayla had to check her calendar for that one, thanking Sander’s earth sign preparedness for the note placed a few Sundays down reading “FREE THE FUCK”. She rolled her eyes at the event title almost immediately, but the appropriate fingers wiggled in their plaster prison in acknowledgment.

_4wks_

She felt queer as all hell with how quickly she’d shot that one off. Good god. Gallagher wasted no time sending an equally queer response, though, and something like carbonation sparked in her blood when she opened it.

_I guess I’ll just have to be patient then ;)_

Mikayla vaguely registered a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, a rare display she would have been all too eager to hide were there any witnesses around to catch her. She was powerless to stop it, though. She’d never had a woman express interest in taking her out before, let alone one that was willing to wait a whole month to do so.

Something was slowly growing inside her with every new message from Ian, something small and bright that felt an awful lot like the beginnings of hope. Experience told her it was dangerous to let that feeling take root, but it was a thrill she hadn’t felt in a very long time, and she was going to savor the novelty for as long as she possibly could. 

She would never forget the things that her mother and the string of men she’d fucked had done to her, and the thought of them would never sicken her any less as time went on. But the next morning when she awoke to a picture of Ian bathed in the golden sunlight coming through her kitchen blinds, Mikayla drank the image in. She let her eyes linger on the strong, pale shoulders that flaming hair licked down. She let herself smile fondly at the pout set on Ian’s naked face as the woman squinted and held up an ugly homemade coffee mug. And, most damningly of all, when she read the attached message, she let herself respond to it right away. 

_Good morning sunshine! I’ve got an early start today. Hope this doesn’t wake you, no one deserves to be up at this hour._

The timestamp showed it coming through at 5:03am, an hour she could agree was ungodly even if one didn’t have a high-stress, back-breaking job to get to straight after. It was nearing 10 now though, and Mikayla was much more concerned with the lumpy monstrosity in Gallagher’s hand.

_your kid sister make that cup for you? it looks like shit_

It did. The scrawled writing across it read “#1 Sister (don’t tell Lip or Carla)” in a downright ghastly shade of purple, but the ensuing story Ian told about ten year old Lea smuggling it home for her after she’d had a bad day at work made something happen inside of Mikayla that damn near felt like her cockles warming.

And, she thought, with a smartass response at the tip of her fingers, maybe she could finally let herself enjoy the good things too. 


End file.
